Navigating Towards Sustainable Maritime Logistics: Innovation in Energy Management and Environmental Conservation

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on advancing sustainable maritime logistics through integrated innovations in energy management and environmental conservation across shipping, ports, and hinterland logistics systems. It aims to gather interdisciplinary research that addresses energy-efficient operations, low-carbon technologies, alternative fuels, port electrification, digital optimization, and lifecycle-based environmental assessment. The purpose of this collection is to provide robust evidence, reproducible methods, and practical decision-support tools that help balance emissions reduction, operational efficiency, cost control, resilience, and ecosystem protection. This Special Issue expands upon prior studies that have examined isolated technologies or single segments of the maritime chain by promoting system-level, data-driven, and policy-relevant perspectives. By connecting decarbonization, environmental stewardship, and sustainable supply chain governance, it closely aligns with the scope of Sustainability and contributes actionable knowledge for researchers, industry practitioners, and policymakers.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue “Navigating Towards Sustainable Maritime Logistics: Innovation in Energy Management and Environmental Conservation.” Maritime transport underpins global supply chains, yet it faces mounting pressure to decarbonize while protecting marine ecosystems and coastal communities. Policy momentum is rising—such as the IMO’s 2023 GHG Strategy and regional measures like the EU ETS and FuelEU Maritime—but implementation is still constrained by fuel uncertainty, technology readiness, infrastructure gaps, and operational trade-offs. Moreover, environmental conservation extends beyond GHGs to air pollutants, underwater noise, ballast water and bioinvasions, waste and marine litter, and the protection of sensitive habitats. We welcome interdisciplinary research and practice that advances developments in energy management across ships, ports, and hinterland logistics and delivers reproducible methods, data, and actionable insights for industry, regulators, and technology developers.

This collection brings together research linking energy and carbon management across shipping–port–hinterland systems with environmental conservation and sustainable development. We invite research with measurable, comparable outcomes supported by reproducible models, data, and decision-support tools. We particularly welcome studies that advance clean technologies and operational strategies, quantify sustainability trade-offs and co-benefits from a lifecycle (well-to-wake) perspective, and propose scalable policies, incentives, and governance mechanisms for adoption across regions and supply chains.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:

• Energy-efficient operations: speed/route optimization and fleet/schedule planning.
• Low-carbon technologies: hybrid/electric, wind-assist, hull/propeller and waste-heat solutions.
• Alternative fuels: ammonia/methanol/hydrogen/biofuels and well-to-wake accounting.
• Port energy and electrification: shore power, electrified handling, renewables/microgrids, and pricing and demand response.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Lang Xu
Dr. Shaorui Zhou
Prof. Dr. Guangnian Xiao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.